


whatever's meant to be will work out perfectly

by luladannys



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Miscarriage, potential trigger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-10 00:45:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5562250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luladannys/pseuds/luladannys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hardest losses are the things you didn't know you had to lose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	whatever's meant to be will work out perfectly

**Author's Note:**

> I'M SORRY IN ADVANCE  
> (title from Keep Holding On, the Glee version got stuck in my head while I was writing this)

Eve made a note to herself that any case in the future involving creatures that preyed only on men should be left to just her and Cassandra to handle. Despite a thorough debriefing from Jenkins on echidnas, creatures with the upper body of a beautiful woman and the lower body of a giant serpent, Ezekiel had let himself be fooled by one and dragged down into her lair.

The tunnel that the snake-lady (as Ezekiel had been phrasing it all day) poked the top half of herself out of to lure men ended in a wide cave, where she would bring her victims to devour. When the creature saw that she had been followed, she tossed Ezekiel aside and went for Eve, eyes wild and fangs bared as she hissed at the Guardian.

Eve landed a punch in the center of her face and the echidna wailed as her hands flew to cover her nose. She reared back up and made to spring again, but at the last second turned and swung her tail. It caught Eve in the gut and sent her flying until her back hit the cave wall. She slumped to the ground in a daze until a shout from Ezekiel brought her back into action.

The young Librarian was being held in the echidna’s tail, legs flailing about as he struggled against the tightening grip that was pinning his arms to his sides. The serpent side of the creature was taking over and her jaw unhinged, allowing for her gruesome mouth to spread even wider as she lowered her meal into it.

Two _bang_ s echoed through the cave and the creature screeched as Eve’s bullets tore through her tail, involuntarily releasing Ezekiel. The thief landed on the ground with an _oomph!_ but quickly scrambled to his feet to join his Guardian. Eve ushered him ahead of her back up the tunnel. The echidna struggled after them, dragging herself with her hands because her tail was incapacitated.

At the end of the tunnel, Stone and Flynn helped pull them out and Cassandra tossed down a crude bomb that the three had constructed while Eve and Ezekiel were inside. All five sprinted away from the tunnel and then crouched on the ground, covering their heads, as the explosive went off inside of the cave, killing the creature (hopefully).

After the ground stopped rumbling, the four Librarians and their Guardian took their time getting up to head back to their rental car.

“You alright, Baird?” Stone asked, noticing the slight grimace on her face as they walked.

She nodded, but he kept watching her. She had been the one that had driven them out there and had intended on driving back, but once they reached the olive green Jeep, she stumbled a little, catching herself on the vehicle with one arm as the other wrapped around her torso. The others surrounded her instantly, asking what was wrong.

“She got smacked pretty hard with the snake-lady’s tail,” Ezekiel told them.

The moment of pain subsided and Eve waved off their concerns, but Flynn nonetheless declared that he was going to drive so that she could rest and she really did not want to fight him. Something did not feel right. Maybe the hit had been pretty bad, but she just hadn’t really felt it until now. She had seen soldiers take bullets without even noticing until the adrenaline of the situation wore off. Eve climbed into the passenger seat and for half of their ride back through the desert towards civilization she was fine, but then they hit a rather jarring bump and a pained groan slipped past her lips before she could even try to hold it back.

All four pairs of eyes were on her and there was no way she was going to be able to dismiss their concerns this time. She couldn’t even do it with her own.

Cassandra had unbuckled her seatbelt and was leaning through the space between Flynn and Eve to assess what was wrong with their Guardian. Eve had both arms around her middle now and her eyes were squeezed shut to try to dull the stabbing pain and to avoid looking at any of the others.

“It might be internal bleeding,” Cassandra said. “We should get her to a hospital.”

Ezekiel’s fingers immediately started flying across the keyboard of his phone while Stone unfolded their road map. Cassandra sat back in between them in the backseat and used the information both of them had to visualize where they were and where the nearest _anywhere_ would be.

Together, the three located a gas station that would be a few miles down the main road once they got back to that and using Ezekiel’s phone, which somehow always had service, got a hold of Jenkins to tell him to set up a door.

Ezekiel had his phone start routing the way. Flynn was driving faster, the car zipping over the terrain towards the highway, and Eve tightened her arms like that would somehow hold her together. She opened her eyes briefly and saw him glancing at her sideways. His hands were gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles were white. He looked terrified. She hated that she was doing that to him and shut her eyes again so she wouldn’t have to see the expressions of the other Librarians.

Once they were on the road, the ride was smoother and it wasn’t long before Eve’s door was being opened and Stone was undoing her seatbelt. He tried to unwrap her arms from her torso to help her out of the car, but it hurt so bad that she curled in on herself more and finally he just lifted her. She decided that she could be embarrassed about that later.

Light blinded her as they passed through a door into the Annex. Stone stood still for a moment, shifting her in his arms while they waited for Jenkins to reset the Back Door to a hospital, and then she felt someone else’s hand on her shoulder. She tilted her head and looked up to see Flynn. He kissed her forehead.

“Everything will be fine.”

Eve couldn’t tell if he was saying that to her or to himself.

Ezekiel and Jenkins started yelling at each other about the speed at which the resetting of the door’s location was going and Cassandra quickly defused the situation by reminding them that bickering was not helping. They both shut up instantly and once they worked together the Back Door was ready within seconds. Eve met Jenkins’s eye as Stone carried her back through the doorway and unlike with the others, it was not worry in his gaze, but sorrow.

Flynn, Ezekiel, and Cassandra ran ahead of Stone to get an employee’s attention. A strong pain struck Eve deep inside of her and she cried out.

“It’s gonna be okay now, Eve,” Stone said. “They’re gonna help you. It’ll be alright.”

The others came running back, along with a nurse who had a wheelchair for her. Stone set her down in it and the Librarians followed as the nurse pushed her through the halls until they got to a point where he said that they couldn’t anymore. Eve looked down at her arms, which she figured at this point would be locked in a viselike grip around her abdomen for the rest of her life, and on her lap she saw blood spreading across her jeans.

Whatever happened after that was a blur.

* * *

The first thing she noticed when she woke up was the lack of pain and she took a moment to just breathe before finding the call button on the remote beside her in the little hospital bed. Her head was a little groggy, but otherwise she felt fine.

A nurse came in to check her vitals, but when Eve asked what the problem had been, she just said that the doctor would be there soon. Then the nurse turned on the television for her and left. Eve shut it right back off.

She raised her bed so that she could sit up. She wondered where the others were and how long she had been there. There was a clock on the wall by the door that informed her it was about a quarter to seven and the fact that it was dark out meant nighttime, which was a relief because that meant it couldn’t have been too long. It was still the same day.

After a few minutes, Doctor Harris came in and introduced himself. He went over her chart and the vitals that the nurse had just taken.

“You’re doing very well, Miss Baird. I see no reason why you can’t be released tomorrow.”

“What happened?” Eve asked.

The doctor sighed, which made a knot form anxiously in her stomach.

“Miss Baird, were you aware of your pregnancy?”

She heard ringing in her ears and didn’t know what her eyes were fixed on because whatever it was blurred before her as she tried to process the question. _Pregnancy._

Finally, she swallowed the lump in her throat and managed to say, “I’m pregnant?”

Doctor Harris sat down at the edge of her bed by her feet and just looked at her for a brief moment before speaking again.

“You _were_ pregnant. The abdominal pain you experienced earlier was a miscarriage. I’m so sorry.”

This time, there was no ringing. It was like the entire world had gone silent. Eve didn’t move. She didn’t do anything at all and it took a moment before she realized that the doctor was expecting some sort of reaction from her.

“…Oh.”

“This happens in many pregnancies, Miss Baird, especially ones that the mother is unaware of. You are in very good health, so it had nothing to do with that. Sometimes…it just doesn’t work out.”

She felt herself nod in acknowledgment of what he had said, but overall just felt a numbness. She had lost a baby that she hadn’t even known she was carrying and she didn’t know what to think or how to feel about the situation at all. Not having been aware of its existence hadn’t allowed her to grow any sort of attachment or excitement about it. But the fact that she hadn’t known made Eve feel cold and neglectful.

“Do you know…how far…?” she brought herself to ask.

“Only three or four weeks.”

_Only three or four weeks. Only. Only_ three or four _weeks. Weeks._

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to remember if anything, anything had seemed off in the last few weeks, anything that could have given her some sort of warning so that maybe she could have done a better job. Because that was her _job_. She was a Guardian. She kept people alive. Except this person.

“Would you like to be alone?” Doctor Harris asked. “Or I can send your friends in. They’re waiting just down the hall. I could tell them for you, if you want me to.”

“Flynn. Just Flynn. I’ll tell him.”

The doctor left and Eve drifted back into that silence, that limbo of emotions. Everything just felt monotone and gray.

Then the door flew open and Flynn was there, smiling in obvious relief, and she broke. The smooth reserve cracked and he was by her side before the first sob finished wracking through her. His arm went around her shoulders and Eve melted into him.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” he asked. “The doctor said you’re doing well.”

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

She kept saying it over and over. Flynn wrapped both of his arms around her and kept pressing his lips against the top of her head, making gentle sounds to try to calm her.

“Eve, what’s going on?”

“I didn’t know. I would have done better. I would have tried. But I didn’t know.”

Her voice trailed into gasping hiccups and Flynn waited until her breathing relaxed again, then gently placed a hand under her chin to try to coax her into looking at him, but she just buried her face further into his shoulder. He rested his cheek on top of Eve’s head and just silently held her as he waited for her to say something.

After about ten minutes, Eve sat up and wiped her hands over her pink, blotchy face. She peeled his arms off of her and placed his hands in his lap. He reached out to take a hold of hers and she moved them back again. She did not look him in the eyes at all. She couldn’t.

“Eve, honey, you’re really scaring me,” Flynn said and went to move some of the hair that was stuck to the side of her face, but she pulled away. “Please, whatever it is, just tell me.”

She looked at the hands that he now respectfully kept in his lap. She wanted nothing more than to hold his hand, feel his fingers supportively squeezing hers, but she couldn’t take the chance of him letting go once she told him.

“I was pregnant, Flynn. I didn’t know. But I was pregnant and…now I’m not.”

A warmth flooded through her as he pulled her into his embrace, one arm around her back and his other hand on the back of her head, stroking her tangled blonde hair. Eve wrapped her arms around him tightly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered after a moment.

Flynn pulled back enough to be able to look at her, rubbing his thumb over her cheek.

“I can’t imagine what is going on in your head right now and I won’t try to tell you how to feel, but you don’t have to apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t know how you even feel about babies or having them…with me…, but I know that you would never have put this one at risk if you had known about it.”

“It was so small. I keep all of you safe, but I couldn’t take care of this small little person. I’m supposed to be a _Guardian_.”

Flynn’s heart felt like it was made out of lead. He didn’t know how to console her, to convince her that what had happened was not her fault. Words about _next time_ swam around his head and he fought them from slipping off of his tongue. Maybe she wouldn’t want a next time. Maybe she wouldn’t have even wanted this time if she had known this time was happening.

“Flynn?” she said softly. “I keep thinking about myself. How do _you_ feel?”

“Heartbroken,” he answered and Eve closed her eyes, head dipping down in shame. He nudged it back up and her eyelids slid back open to reveal pale blue clouded by tears. “I wish that I had known about it, too, but we didn’t. We lost something today and it hurts, but it hurts more to see you beating yourself up about it so much. There was nothing you could have done, Eve. It wasn’t your fault. I will keep telling you that until you believe it and then I will tell you again. I’m heartbroken because I love you so much and I…I was afraid I was going to lose you today, but now I’m afraid you’ve lost yourself. You _are_ a Guardian. You are the most caring and protective person I have ever met and you always put the wellbeing of others ahead of your own. Please let me help you see that. Let me help you get through this.”

Eve wiped her eyes and nestled back into his embrace, her forehead pressed in the space between his neck and shoulder.

“I love you, too,” she told him.

They sat wrapped around each other in the little hospital cot for a long while before Flynn brought up that he should at least go tell the other Librarians that she was okay because it had been quite a while since he had gone in there. Eve said that she wanted to see them, but asked if he would tell them about the baby because she didn’t have it in her to say what had happened out loud again. He rose off of the bed and lifted one of her hands to his lips before exiting the room.

A few minutes later, he returned and took up his spot beside her again, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Stone and Cassandra trailed into the room behind him. Cassandra’s face was pink with faint lines down her cheeks, like she had tried to cover up the fact that she had been crying to not upset Eve. Stone rounded the bed to the side opposite of Flynn and leaned over to kiss Eve’s forehead.

“I’m real sorry, Eve,” he said.

Cassandra stood at the foot of the bed and just nodded her shared condolences. Eve could see the tightness in the woman’s throat, clearly holding her back from saying something or crying again. She gestured for Cassandra to come closer and Stone practically got shoved aside as the redhead launched herself at Eve for a tearful hug.

When Cassandra pulled back, perching herself on the edge of the bed, Flynn handed her the handkerchief from his pocket and she dried her face again.

“I, of all people, should probably know what to say to people in hospitals,” she said, “but I don’t. I’m sorry. I’m glad that you’re okay and if you need anything, let me know.”

Eve squeezed her hand. “Thank you. Both of you.”

Stone pulled a chair over from the corner of the room to sit in and Eve looked between them all, absorbing their love and support. Then she realized that someone was missing.

“Where’s Jones?”

The three Librarians glanced at each other – Flynn looking confused, Cassandra clearly worried, and Stone trying (and failing) to mask his anger.

“After Flynn told us and we were headed in here, Ezekiel just told us to go ahead without him,” Cassandra explained.

“Oh,” was all Eve could say for the second time that day.

She must not have done a good job at covering the slight hurt she felt that Ezekiel had not come to visit her because Stone was quickly on his feet and marching out the door, saying that he was going to hunt Jones down. A muttered string of colorful words about the youngest Librarian slipped out of his mouth until he slammed the door behind himself.

“Ezekiel cares more than he lets on,” Cassandra said to Eve. “You know that. He just doesn’t know how to show it.”

When Stone returned, Ezekiel-less, he threw his arms out at his sides and proclaimed that he had circled the entire floor twice, but had not found the thief. He was fuming.

“It’s fine, Stone. Don’t worry about it,” said Eve.

“No, it’s not fine!” he exclaimed. “This is _a family_ and when things like this happen, you don’t just disappear on your family! When he turns that smug little face of his up, I’m gonna -”

The looks he was receiving from Flynn, Eve, and Cassandra shut him up midsentence. This did not need to be happening right now, either. He mumbled an apology and sat back down.

* * *

A nurse came by a little before ten-thirty to tell them that visiting hours were almost over and that they could come back in the morning. Eve was on track to be released by noon. Stone and Cassandra said their goodnights and left so that Flynn and Eve could have a moment alone.

“I wish I could stay with you,” Flynn sighed.

“Me, too. But promise me you’ll sleep tonight, Librarian.”

“I will.”

She narrowed her eyes a bit. “ _In_ _a bed_.”

He couldn’t help the slight grin that came to his face. She was already coming back to herself and a bit of weight lifted off of his chest.

“I promise. I will sleep. In a bed,” he replied, punctuating each sentence with a kiss.

The nurse had left an extra blanket at the foot of Eve’s bed and Flynn stood up to spread it over her. He lingered over her bed, toying with a strand of her hair while she held his unpreoccupied hand in both of hers, until the nurse reappeared in the doorway and cleared her throat.

“I love you,” Flynn whispered against her forehead before he kissed it.

“I love you, too. And I don’t want you to worry about me tonight, okay? I’ll be fine.”

He finally headed towards the door and the nurse waiting there impatiently.

“Flynn?” Eve called out to him. “Can you do something for me?”

“Anything,” he answered without hesitation.

“Don’t let the boys kill each other.”

He nodded and it wasn’t until he was a few steps down that hall that he realized that that was an actual, real task. He was pretty pissed at Ezekiel for bailing on Eve at a time like this himself, but Stone had been downright seething. Flynn hurried to the elevator and half-jogged back to the door that would lead him through to the Annex, hoping that there hadn’t already been bloodshed.

* * *

He had not even been gone for an hour when Eve saw a light flash from under the bathroom door and Flynn stumbled out of it. She knew that she should have chewed him out, but she really wanted him there and he was in a change of clothes, so she had to give him a bit of credit for that. Without a word, she scooted herself over and he kicked off his sneakers before slipping into the tiny bed beside her.

“I promised you I would sleep in a bed,” Flynn mumbled. “I never specified what bed.”

She curled into his side, resting her head on his shoulder, and his arms came around her. For the brief time that she had been alone, she had turned the television on to some late-night talk show but had it on mute. They left it on, the light flashing around them, but they paid no attention to it.

“Hey, Flynn?” Eve whispered after a while, not sure if he was asleep.

“Hm?”

“I just wanted to tell you that…that I would have loved to have a baby…with you.”

He held her tighter. “Me, too.”

And Eve fell right to sleep.

* * *

She was still asleep when the nurse came to check on her in the morning, though Flynn was awoken by the startled gasp that the woman let out.

“How did you get back in here?” the nurse demanded.

Flynn started babbling for a response and Eve shifted against his side, nuzzling her face against his shoulder.

“Gobacktosleep,Librarian,” she muttered, just like on the rare lazy mornings that they took when his brain just would not relax and all she wanted to do was stay in bed a little bit longer.

The nurse gave in, smiling softly at the two of them, and left without another word.

Stone and Cassandra snuck in some real breakfast, in lieu of hospital food, later, reporting that neither of them had seen or heard from Ezekiel at all since the night before, which was worrisome to their Guardian.

Doctor Harris happened to come by during a brief moment when Eve was alone. Flynn, Cassandra, and Stone had stepped out to arrange how they were going to sneak her through the door that the Annex was connected to because in their haste to get her to a hospital the previous day, they had accidentally ended up in one in Minnesota. The doctor confirmed that she had made a full recovery and he would get her release paperwork prepared, then asked Eve if she had any questions.

“Will I be able to have another baby someday?”

“I don’t see why not. Like I told you yesterday, you are in excellent health. I wouldn’t go jumping into trying again too soon, though.”

She thanked him and as Doctor Harris exited the room, Flynn jumped away from the door and scrambled to hide behind a cart full of dirty trays from breakfast. He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. He had just been returning to tell Eve the plan that he had come up with the other two Librarians and found himself stopping short when he heard Eve inquire about her ability to have another baby.

When he strolled into the room a few seconds later, it took everything in him to not smile like an idiot and give away the fact that he had heard what she said. Eve would bring it up to him in her own time.

* * *

They slipped her out seamlessly, Flynn and Cassandra bombarding the nurse that was chaperoning the wheeling of Eve out the front door with rapid-fire medical questions while Stone turned a quick corner and got her to the door that opened into the Annex.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” she told him.

Stone smiled and shrugged, playing it off. “It’s nothin’, Baird. You know whatever you need, I’m there. Now, I, uh, I should give them the wheelchair back.”

He darted out with the chair and Eve stepped into the center of the Annex, breathing in the familiarity after such a shaking past day. There was a soft _clink_ ing noise that she recognized as Jenkins’s china and caught him sneaking around some of the shelves towards the back.

“Everything alright, Jenkins?”

He strode forward like he had not been doing anything weird like skulking in the shadows with a stack of books and a cup of tea. He set everything down at his desk and began moving things about in seemingly no particular order.

“I am glad to see you feeling better, Colonel Baird,” he said, but did not look up at her.

She wandered over to the desk where he was just shifting things back and forth, avoiding her gaze.

“Okay, what’s up?” she asked suspiciously.

Jenkins sighed and hesitantly met her eye. “I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“I knew that…you were expecting a child.”

Eve did a double take. “What do you mean? How could you have -”

“I am a _caretaker_ , Colonel, and I have been for a very long time. I can see the signs a mile away and I noticed the change in you maybe two weeks ago. I did not say anything because I wanted you to find out on your own, to enjoy the surprise. I wish now that I had spoken up. I’m very sorry, Eve.”

She reached out and touched his shoulder. “It’s okay, Jenkins. It happened and it wasn’t anyone’s fault, especially not yours. But…if you ever notice _the change_ in me again, would you let me know?”

“With pleasure.”

He smiled and a few seconds later, the Back Door was depositing three Librarians. Eve glanced around the room, looking for any sign of the fourth.

“I would like to borrow Colonel Baird for a moment before you two leave, Mr. Carsen,” Jenkins said.

They had made a decision to take a few days off of work, to just be alone after what had happened. Flynn was quickly distracted by Cassandra, who wanted to show him something she had found in her spare research lately, and Jenkins led Eve through the door into the Library.

“Was there something else that you wanted to talk about?” Eve asked. “Because, really, I’m not upset with you for not telling me.”

“Mr. Jones returned alone yesterday and has not exited the Library since. When the others came back, I thought it best not to divulge his location. Tensions were rather high, particularly with Mr. Stone.”

He wound through the various aisles, halls, and corridors of the Library. Eve was still trying to create an accurate memory map of the enormous space. The fact that rooms had been moving for a while had not helped, but now that everything was in its proper place she was slowly learning the layout.

Finally, they reached the beginning of a walkway that stretched over a large pool of water. The whole area was like crossing into a tranquil night. Just a few months ago, Eve would have assumed that the lights shining on the dark ceiling were fake, but the Library had a second sun laying around, so why wouldn’t it somehow have its own little section of the night sky? Jenkins gestured down the walkway, where Ezekiel was sitting with his legs dangling over the edge, his forehead resting against one of the protection bars as he stared down at the still water below.

“Thank you,” Eve said quietly to Jenkins and as she started down the walkway, the caretaker left so that the Guardian and Librarian could be alone.

She knew that Ezekiel had heard her coming. He had made it clear many times that people _did not_ sneak up on Ezekiel Jones. He kept his gaze fixed on the water, even as she sat down beside him, slipping her own legs through the bars to hang just like his.

Eve looked down to see what was even in this section of the Library that she had never been in before. The water was dark and unmoving, but below the surface there were translucent figures swimming about. They were beautiful, like people made out of moonlight just meandering through the water with no cares in the world.

“What are they?” Eve asked.

“Ashrays,” Ezekiel answered. “They only come out at night, so this room is always nighttime. They’re from Scotland. People used to mistake them for sea ghosts and try to catch them, but if you take one out, it just melts into a puddle.”

Eve turned her head to look at him. He surprised her a lot. Unlike Flynn, who knew something about seemingly everything, the younger Librarians tended to stay within their areas of expertise. Stone was art and architecture, with a bit of engineering thrown in there from his life before the Library. Cassandra was all science and math. Ezekiel somehow always just got reduced to _the thief_ , which was something that Eve knew she was guilty of on multiple occasions. He seemed to like that illusion of himself, though. He encouraged it, even. But there was more to him than that.

“They’re these lovely things, but they’re so easy to ruin. I should know. I ruin everything I touch.”

Eve’s heart sunk. “No, you don’t. How can you say that? You’ve touched more priceless things in this world than some people can even dream of. You _drop_ them sometimes, but you never ruin anything.”

“I ruin people’s lives. You and Flynn could have been happy and I ruined that for you.” Eve opened her mouth to cut him off, but he pushed himself to his feet and carried on. “I’ve done a lot of things, screwed a lot of people over, but I never wanted to kill anybody and now I have and I hurt people that I care about, which is why I shouldn’t be able to care about anybody at all. I ruin them.”

Then it all made sense – why he had run off after Flynn told them about the miscarriage, why he had been hiding from all of them. He blamed himself because Eve had been protecting him.

“Ezekiel…,” she said softly as she stood up, too.

“I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve any of you. I’m just a curse.”

His hands were balled into fists and his brown eyes were filled with tears threatening to spill over. Eve stepped in front of him and tenderly brushed back the hair that had fallen onto his forehead.

“You are not a curse, Ezekiel. You do not ruin anything. I will keep telling you that until you believe it and then I will tell you again.”

His mouth quivered and a few tears slid down his face. Eve opened her arms and Ezekiel stepped inside, clutching the back of her shirt and crying against her shoulder. She ran a hand over his back.

While she had been beating herself up about what had happened, both Jenkins and Ezekiel were doing the same, and Eve fully understood now what Flynn had meant about being afraid that she would lose herself in all of this. Jenkins carried centuries of guilt around and Ezekiel believed himself to be a curse to anyone he got close to. Eve would not let herself succumb to the feelings of blame and irresponsibility that floated around inside of her and she would not let them drag around the load of those feelings for her.

She leaned her head against his, but immediately started coughing and realized she had inhaled some of the fine, dry desert sand from the previous day that still held residency in Ezekiel’s hair. They half-separated their hug so Eve could finish coughing into the crook of her elbow.

“You need a shower,” she declared when it was over. “And a change of clothes. And you probably haven’t eaten at all, have you?”

With an arm slung around his shoulders, she started to guide Ezekiel back through the Library, but it wasn’t long before she realized she had no idea where they were going and he took over. When they reached the white steps with the golden lions, he turned to her.

“You’d make a great mum.”

A warmth blossomed in her chest and she felt herself smile softly at him.

“Thank you.”

When they walked through into the Annex together, Stone looked ready to pounce now that the young man that he had spent all night stewing anger over had reappeared, but the look on Eve’s face said that everything was fine and Stone made himself calm back down.

Ezekiel nodded at Eve, then went over to Flynn and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, mate.”

Then he disappeared to go get cleaned up and Flynn and Eve said their goodbyes to the others, telling them to call if they needed anything over the next few days. After they had left, however, Jenkins informed the two Librarians present that Flynn and Eve were _not_ to be disturbed during their leave, no matter what they had said.

* * *

For four days, Eve and Flynn stayed holed up in their apartment. They watched movies and fumbled around each other in the small kitchen and would spend quiet chunks of time just curled up together.

One morning, Eve stood on the balcony with a thin hoodie hanging open over her pajamas. It was the beginning of October and the air was starting to become brisk in the late and early hours, despite the humidity. Flynn came up beside her with two fresh cups of tea and she took one, sipping at it as they looked out over the park across the street. There were a few people jogging around the sidewalk that surrounded the park, but the playground was empty. The plastic seats chained to the swingset swayed in a light breeze.

“We would have had a springtime baby,” Eve said. “I think that would have been nice. Yellow nursery, outdoor birthday parties, grass stains on everything.”

Flynn nodded. “I think so, too. You know what I love about spring?”

She looked at him, waiting for the answer.

“When you’re frozen through to your bones and everything seems bleak, you can always count on spring to come and brighten everything up, to melt away the cold and bring new life. Granted, winters have actually been unseasonably warm lately due to climate ch-”

He was cut off by Eve putting a hand to his cheek and kissing him softly.

“What are you doing next August, Librarian?”

Flynn’s eyes fluttered open from the kiss and then he started babbling. After watching him in loving amusement for a moment, she pressed two fingers against his lips to stop the incoherent words jumbling out about how Librarians did not have schedules and that, despite best efforts, any plans that they made were pretty unreliable.

“Pencil in some time to help me make another spring baby.”

“That I can do,” he said against her fingers, then kissed them, and pulled her in close.


End file.
